MEDICAL BAG
This month’s expert medical advice: don’t eat magnets, batteries or fireworks...
MAGNET-SWALLOWING CHILDREN
A 12-year-old boy underwent a life-saving operation after deliberately swallowing 54 magnets. Rhiley Morrison, from Prestwich, Greater Manchester, wanted to see if metal would stick to his stomach and so ate magnetic balls on two separate occasions. After he told his mother, Ms Paige Ward, about his dangerous experiment, she took him to Salford Royal Hospital. An X-ray revealed 54 of the magnet toys were inside his stomach and bowel. Rhiley was then sent by ambulance to Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital, where doctors, fearing that the powerful magnets might burn through his tissue or vital organs with the potential for fatal internal damage, removed the objects during a six-hour keyhole surgery procedure.
Initially, when the balls had not reappeared after four days, Rhiley told his mother he had swallowed two of the metal spheres by accident; but he later admitted he had swallowed 54 of them out of curiosity, both to see if magnets inside his body would enable metal objects to adhere to his skin, and also curious about what they would look like when he passed them. Having been discharged after a
“I wanted to see if this copper would stick to my belly”
16-day-stay in hospital, Rhiley was recovering at home. His mother hoped the story of his ordeal might help warn parents about the potential dangers of magnetic ball toys, explaining that due to magnet-ingesting complications, Rhiley had been forced to endure 10 days unable to move without vomiting a green liquid which was caused by his leaking bowel. In addition, she said, he had been unable to eat or go to the toilet, and needed to be tube-fed and have a catheter inserted.
“I was gobsmacked, just speechless when I heard the number he’d swallowed,” she said. But Ms Ward explained that Rhiley is “massively into science, he loves experiments,” and that he had eventually admitted to her: “I tried to stick magnets to me. I wanted to see if this copper would stick to my belly while the magnets were in.” She added: “It’s just so silly, but he’s a child... He also thought it would be fun seeing them come out the other end.” She explained that although Rhiley has been diagnosed as having autism and ADHD: “He’s quite high functioning. He knows what he’s doing, he knows right from wrong.”
Rhiley had asked for magnet toys for Christmas and had bought more from a corner shop with money he had saved up. Ms Ward believes he swallowed the first batch on 1 January 2021 and the second on 4 January. He became worried the next day when none of the magnets had yet passed through his system, and woke his mother at 2am on 5 January, when she rushed him to hospital. She was anxious that hospital staff might blame her for Rhiley’s predicament, but was reassured by a trauma nurse who told her that “she deals with kids like Rhiley who’ve eaten magnets all the time.”
“I don’t want other kids or parents going through that,” Ms Ward said. “Magnets aren’t toys, they shouldn’t be sold as toys... The surgeon said that Rhiley… could have died. Rhiley was lucky but some kids aren’t and won’t be.” In footage filmed from his bed during his stay in hospital, Rhiley said: “My advice is never, ever eat magnets – bin them.”
Last year, a doctor from Stockport issued an open letter to parents warning them of the potentially fatal results of the magnetic ball craze: “Apparently, some children have been creating a larger ball using numerous balls and putting them in their mouth, then placing other balls on the outside of their face,” the letter explained. “They then use their tongue to move the larger ball in their mouth to make the balls on their face move, which understandably kids find amusing. However, some of the individual balls in their mouth can come away and be accidentally swallowed. The balls are highly magnetic and can cause severe damage to the digestive tract. As the balls move through the bowel, they can magnetise together even when in different parts of the bowel. The pressure applied to the bowel tissue lying between the two magnets is so strong that it causes a perforation in the bowel. This is extremely serious and can be fatal if not identified and promptly fixed by abdominal surgery.”
The doctor said he was aware of at least four other children who had required surgery because of magnet-swallowing, including a six-year-old girl and a 12-year-old boy. In 2020, three-year-old Tomás Quinn from Newry in Northern Ireland needed emergency surgery to remove 29 tiny magnetic balls, as well as having part of his intestine removed. And according to Belfast’s Royal Hospital for Sick Children, 19 children between the ages of two and 14 required medical treatment for magnet ingestion in 2019; three had to have major surgery, including a three-year-old boy from whose stomach 49 magnets were removed, and a 13-year-old girl who needed to have a section of her intestine cut away. BBC News, 11 Aug 2020; D.Mail, 8 Feb 2021.
BATTERY DANGER
A 26-year-old prison inmate was taken to the emergency department of Santa Maria Nuova Hospital in Florence, Italy, complaining of stomach pains.
He had deliberately swallowed an AA battery two hours before admission. Doctors performed an EKG; electrodes on the chest record the heart’s electrical activity and present it as a graph. In this case the graph indicated that the man was having a type of heart attack characterised as ‘ST segment elevation’. This shows a certain segment of the EKG, normally flat, being instead elevated.
The inmate reported no symptoms of a heart attack (such as shortness of breath), and his levels of cardiac troponin (proteins released into the blood during a heart attack), were normal. The only risk factor he reported was cigarette smoking. Previous case reports document a man who swallowed six AAA batteries, and another man who swallowed 18 AA batteries. In each of these cases their respective EKG readings were altered. It is not known for sure how battery ingestion can mimic heart attack. One suggestion is that the battery’s contact with stomach acid could produce an electric current that travels to the heart and affects the EKG.
In this case, the man suffered no complications, but doctors advise against the practice of swallowing batteries. The prolonged electrical effects, they say, could damage the heart. Battery consumption may also be hazardous as it could potentially block the windpipe or cause an intestinal obstruction. livescience. com, 23 Nov 2020.
SNAP, CRACKLE & BANG
A Warwickshire mother was left with a cracked tooth and chemical burns to her lip and mouth after she ate some fireworks in the mistaken belief that they were sweets. Lisa Boothroyd, 48, said she thought the miniature fireworks, called Fun Snaps, were popping candy. “I remember the moment I crunched down on a handful of the ‘sweets’ – and instantly felt explosions in my mouth,” she recalled. “I felt a burning pain straight away. I’m still in agony and nearly lost a tooth after it cracked from the explosion.”
The packet of mini fireworks has the slogan ‘Snap! Crack! Bang!’ alongside their ‘Fun Snaps’ name, which Mrs Boothroyd said had led her to assume they were popping candy. “I had no idea what was happening,” she told a reporter, criticising the Costcutter shop from which she had purchased the fireworks for having placed them among the children’s sweets. Because the packaging was similar, it was an easy mistake to make, she claimed, explaining: “I had no idea what fun snaps even were. I just can’t believe how much damage those little ‘snaps’ did to my mouth... Who knows what could have happened if a child had made the same mistake as me?”
A Costcutter spokesperson said: “The safety of shoppers is our main priority, so we were very concerned to hear about this incident. We have spoken to the independent retailer who operates this store under our Costcutter brand fascia and they have assured us they will remove this item from the confectionary section with immediate effect.” birminghammail.co.uk, 18 Jan 2021.
PENSIONER ATE POT-PLANT SOIL TO SURVIVE
After falling at her home and fracturing her wrist, Rosemary Frank, 91, spent two days on her bedroom floor before a care volunteer came to her rescue after she had missed a hair salon appointment. Mrs Frank was found semi-conscious and suffering from severe dehydration, with soil inside her stomach. It is believed she must have ingested the pot plant soil for its nutrients and moisture out of desperation induced by her dehydrated state. “I [came to] face down in a pile of soil with it all around my mouth and face. I must have looked a right sight for sore eyes,” she said. Doctors said she had been just “six hours from death”. Following a 10-day stay in hospital, Mrs Frank is now back home and recovering from her ordeal. D.Telegraph, 11 Nov 2020.